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LOL. That's too funny. Someone told me that my letter was on here. I got the phone call asking for permission, but I missed the issue. Holy crap.....they SEVERELY edited my letter. You understand how important context is when it's taken away. It's an honor to be called crazy by an liberal rag. If Hugo Chavez calls you a bad human being, that's a good thing. You don't want those people on your side.

This is how liberals argue. Rather than an honest debate of the facts, they prefer to engage in smears, name calling, and personal attacks. It's much easier to call someone crazy, then actually debate them. You see this all over the place these days.

Pinhead liberals say:

1. "FoxNews lies", but when you press them for one lie, they can't come up with one. I actually saw a REALLY funny segment on Foxnews where they talked to people claiming Fox lies and not one of them could name one lie. FoxNews is a serious news outlet that gladly corrects any factually incorrect information, but it's easier for people to say that they lie than actually debate them.

2. "Glenn Beck is crazy". It's easier to call him crazy than point out where he's wrong. I'm honored to be called crazy like the communists do with Glenn.

3. "Rush Limbaugh is a racist"; yet they can't come up with any evidence. It's easier for liberals to try to smear someone than debate them; especially when it's someone with superior intelligence like Rush.

Everyone in Arizona knows how liberals approach the illegal immigration debate. If you're not in favor of mass amnesty, you must be a racist. This is how liberals debate and argue. You can't blame them. Liberals rarely have facts on their side. How else are they going to try to convince people of their point of view if they can't call them liars, racists, and crazy people. They sure can't simply speak the facts because the facts always prove the conservative point of view.

Now that I think about it, I'm a little disappointed that I was only the crazy letter of the month. Next time, I'll shoot for the craziest letter of the year. That would be an accomplishment.

Loughner absolutely was a liberal before he was crazy. That's indisputable. That was a big part of the controvery of Sheriff Dupnik's rant. Once the FACTS came out, it was shown that Loughner was a liberal. ALL of his former friends said that he was a liberal.

I didn't read anywhere where anyone said that liberals "like" Loughner (I know....stop with the facts already). If you look at the facts of Loughner's life, it's indisputable that he was a liberal. That already makes 3 people on this far-left newspapers' website (Bryan, Pupito, and Mike). I guess we're all the same person in delusional pot-smoking liberal fantasy world. How else could three different people all have examined the evidence in the Loughner case instead of taking Dupnik's "right-wing rhetoric rant" at face value? lol.

Everything's a vast right-wing conspriracy in liberal world. You'd think that the Nov 2010 elections would have woken them up to the fact that most people don't think like them. Most people look at the facts.

Here's an interesting story that made me come back to this thread. Obama has outlawed guns for pot smokers:

Mr. Vargas, there are some concerns that simply can't be solved through mediation, and crime is one of them. Guns not only facilitate crime, they prevent it as well, though at a far higher rate for the latter statistic if the Department Of Justice is to be believed. I can attest to this personally, having used firearms to stop auto theft and violence against my person. No one was shot, shot at or hurt in any way (save possibly their pride) and all parties went home safely at the conclusion. Had I been forced to fumble with a trigger lock or open a gun safe, this would not be the case.

While I respect your opinion, I must also respectfully disagree with it. Neighborhood association meetings may increase local vigilance and decrease crime through common sense (i.e. locking your doors, leaving lights on when away, etc.), but once those measures have failed, you are left with two options-call the police or pull a gun. I leave it to readers' logic to discern which is the faster and more effective of the two.

In the days and weeks after Jan. 8, I was curious as to what Jared Loughner was about, and went looking for info. What lucid ideas he had, (there were precious few, and I doubt he would have made a distinction either way) sounded to me like things I've heard from Ron Paul. The really crazy stuff sounded like Perry & Bachmann. Nothing I could attribute to a liberal.

I think the problem may lie in your interpretation of the word "fact". For future reference, facts are NOT what those little voices in your head keep telling you.

ChetDud, you are right on all counts. Let Dallas try to lure tax-dodging scumbags like Beck into town to create jobs if they want to. Tucson should focus on vocations that contribute to the health and welfare of citizens who have something to contribute to Tucson.

I think letter writer Bryan Smith is actually "Pupito" in the other comments sections. There's just no conceivable way that TWO people can call Jared Loughner a liberal and claim that liberals somehow act like Loughner. Viciously stupid statements find comfortable homes in the comments sections of news websites, but this is just too much coincidence for me.

Tucson does NOT need to "look to other cities" unless those cities are beginning to walk the path to a sustainable future. Most cities (and countries) are scrambling for the last crumbs of a dying system. We should NOT emulate their behavior.

Tucson's problem is that this town is corporate-friendly and war-friendly but NOT "business" friendly. It's not a friendly place for the real driver of the economy; vital small businesses and working people.

Neither Rothschild nor Grinnell would make things better since they both agree that more corporate welfare and pandering to the outsized needs of big business is the "solution".

There's plenty of good Work available in this town creating a sustainable future for the region and there are plenty of good people available to do the work. But the current government and economic system of, by and for the corporations (especially the war profiteers) cannot put those people together with right livelihood at a living wage.

The types of "jobs" that this "economy" values are NOT those that would provide us with a sustainable future worth living in. It's time to consider electing leaders who can help organize for that decent future.

Local governments are always outbidding each other via tax credits and other inducements to bring some preferred company, sports team, etc. to their town.

Time after time that company or team takes advantage of the taxpayer largess only to pick up stakes and move on to someplace that offers them a better deal. Then the taxpayers are holding the bag for an empty building or sports complex that is nothing but a further drag on the government. Look no further than big-league baseball in Tucson for an example.

While Arizona might try to be "movie friendly" in other ways, tax credits for yet another special interest remain a bad idea.

People are leaving high tax states...................true
Beck gets death threats and needs security......true
Liberals aren't opposed to violent talk against opponents........true (see Jimmy Hoffa)
The facts said that Loughner was a crazy liberal who like flag burning videos.....true

Where's the "ridiculous" part? You just don't like inconvenient facts?

More people have forgotten about Grijalva's message than Jan Brewer's "hoardes of headless bodies scattered in the Arizona desert." When you go off-topic, you make no sense....can't defend the FACT that conservatives have hurt, not helped, the AZ film industry. Maybe you forgot when former Gov. Mecham refused to allow AZ to celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr. Day--and all the revenue we lost because of him. You probably forgot because he got booted from office.

Instead of blaming the "conservatives" in Arizona perhaps we should lay the "blame" on Congressman Raul Grijalva...you know the BOYCOTT ARIZONA Representative that we are so proud of! Lay the blame there my friend!

Tuesday night Pima had another community forum on the elimination of the neediest students by not offering certain remedial courses .

But in the beginning……

Pima college claimed they needed to turn away the neediest students (determined by low scores on their assessment test) by eliminating remedial courses because state funding to Pima College had been cut drastically. So the college had to cut and they chose to cut the remedial courses which serve the neediest students because Pima has statistics that say these students are failures.

That is where the myriad of confusion begins – the statistics on Pima College demonstrate that the college has a 10% graduation rate, 79% of the students coming to Pima test into at least one remedial class, and as Pima explained at their most recent community forum 19 out of 20 students leave the college and don’t finish their study program, which actually verifies the rest of higher education’s supposition that community colleges are a waste of taxpayer dollars because they divert students from a worthwhile education?

Yet when Pima college did a recent survey of students they didn’t survey the students who have left; the fault is not because of students’ lack of effort to tell the college, the college just doesn’t listen, that is why students leave.

Students are clear about why they leave Pima including teachers and staff who don’t care and/or have little to no contact with their students evidenced in classes that start out with 30 students and end up with 3 with all of this and funding issues complicated by the college’s payment of six figure salaries to over 45 administrators.

Doubtless, it is not coincidental that this elimination of the neediest from Pima College coincides with the college’s removal of all daycares (which are funded in the same way that all other daycares are funded and which continue to operate), outreach coordinators who would visit high schools, and retention specialists whose major duties included working with the neediest.

The confusion continues: while Pima College initially claimed it was the neediest students’ failures on the assessment tests that prompted this action to eliminate these remedial courses, the college then claimed these students are failures because Pima has provided a wide variety of programs to help them over the past five years and it has not worked. This sounds more like the K-12 schools’ legacy of the past 50 years in which once again public schools have failed our students.

And still more confusion because Pima College said that they were eliminating remedial courses for the neediest because of funding cuts, but now they claim they will set up a new program called Pathways to Pima with techniques to help the neediest students which will cost more mone, although the costs weren’t discussed.

Confusion then leaves one stunned for the techniques in this new program, Pathways to Pima, that were proposed by Pima College, are old solutions. The plan would include the use of literacy and adult education programs that have already existed and which are overloaded already with students. The college also proposed that the neediest students could be sent to other college programs like Center for Training and Development for literacy classes but these programs do not provide those types of services and do require that students take an assessment, so these students cannot access these programs.

Bewilderment then ensues as Pima College proposes that there will be some courses that the neediest students can take at a cost of $33 which in five to six weeks will teach them everything they did not learn in 12 years of high school or in any other previous Pima College program that served the neediest and didn’t work.

Then there is the kicker for these neediest students because they will need to pay for these courses as they will not be eligible for any federal grants or other college assistance.

However, the confusion with Pima College’s plan becomes completely overwhelming because the college will still allow these students to take up to 15 credits of courses, just not any of the major general education courses that are part of a degree steering these neediest students away from the dream of a college degree.

While confusion reigned in much of Pima’s plan to eliminate educational opportunities for the neediest students, one thing was clear at the meeting – this is a done deal because the board and chancellor have already decided this is what will be. So why the community forums if they do not even wish to listen to the community who are the sole reason for their existence as a college.

In not listening to the community, it is an abandonment on the part of the board and Pima College to serve their community well. The outcome is simple – the neediest students will not be able to go to Pima College nor continue onto other accredited universities and college; instead these students will turn to more costly, unaffordable and unaccredited colleges that cannot provide the educational and career opportunities that Pima College was designed to provide.

And it was also made clear at the community forum that the blame lies on students and businesses…..how terribly disingenuous , at its worst hypocritical……

As an epilogue, statistics actually do support that there are programs and schools that do work with the neediest of students; Until educators, which certainly includes Pima college administrators, accept their responsibility for the poor state of our public educational system instead of blaming others, then education is never going to improve……and these types of programs that determine who can and cannot go to college are pure elitism and racism (there is abundant research that clearly demonstrates that blacks and hispanics compose the greatest portion of the neediest students.)

I agree that being dependent on military spending guarantees that the military will keep spending and looking for another war for justification, but to think tourism is an alternative economy is also delusional. Basing an economy on either puts the local populace at a disadvantage. We still end up working for people from somewhere else who have money while we don't. And we still have to build their infrastructure, change their sheets and clean up their waste stream.

While tourism may be the lesser of two evils, it is not as effective as developing a local economy.

Charles W. Walker...can't you come up with something better than the "Sound of Freedom". Think we have heard that one before...many times.

On the single engine aircraft crash, you may be right but I do recall the twin-engine crash of an F-18 from Miramar MCAS in December of 2008 killing four in a San Diego neighborhood..two babies, the mother and grandmother.

I didn't live here in 1978, but I clearly remember in the early '80's one of the Air Force jets crashing into the U of A area...so I guess it's happened at least twice. I believe the flight pattern was changed after the 80's crash, so it wouldn't kill people again. I don't know the policy or pattern now, though. We need a different economy for 21st century Tucson--that phases out the military-industrial-corporate complex. ChetDude is absolutely correct. Another article pointed out that the Old Pueblo would support a fantastic and viable film industry--exactly the types of "business" we need to grow and support. Many people I talk to are 100% on board with diversification.